- Over the past half century, it would be hard to find a leader in Wyoming with a better public service record than Wes Martel.

He was still in his 20's when he was elected to the Eastern Shoshone Business Council, and he's built a record of expertise in policymaking and leadership that touches all or part of six decades.

These days, he has a new job with a Greater Yellowstone coalition, and he's reached a point in his life where he's a respected tribal elder as well, even if he doesn't quite see it that way.

More than 45 years after first entering public service as West Martel slowed down, not even close.

I'm Steve Peck of Wyoming PBS.

This is Wyoming Chronicle.

- [Narrator] Funding for this program is made possible in part by the Wyoming Humanities Council, helping Wyoming take a closer look at life through the humanities, thinkwy.org, and by the members of the Wyoming PBS Foundation.

Thank you for your support.

- You told me that you're in your 70s now, and I mentioned that only because you've been around a long time and you've had a commitment to public service, tribal service for really all of your adult life.

What keeps you interested at this stage in your life?

- The potential we have to really strengthen our families and communities and you know, I have a big family, grandchildren, and lot of relations.

My dad was Shoshone, my mom was Arapaho, so I have a lot of relatives in both tribes.

And when I got on the council- - Now by the council you mean what?

- The Eastern Shoshone Business Council.

I was just now kind of new back to the res.

I'd gotten out of the service, I'd lived in Denver for a few years and then came back.

And I got a job as the editor of the newspaper, and we started the Wind River Journal back in 1977.

And it's still going.

It's the Wind River News now.

But I really didn't understand that much about tribal government.

So when I got the job as an editor, I really started asking a lot of questions of tribal leaders and tribal attorneys and BIA and kind of looking into tribal business and writing about it.

And people used say hey, it's good that you're, we like what you're doing.

You're not afraid to ask questions of the tribal leaders and attorneys and federal agencies, and you speak up for us.

And so people were saying, you should be on the council.

And I had never, ever in my wildest dreams ever thought I'd be on a tribal council.

- Because this is an elected office, right?

- Yeah, yeah.

- You gotta run for it.

- And then back in those days, the nominations process was just a real simple meeting.

They'd call a meeting, they'd call a nominations meeting of the Shoshone tribal membership and tribal members would gather and they'd just say, I nominate Wes Martel, I nominate Bob Harris, I nominate you know, a lot of these other guys were on, and you didn't pay a fee or nothing.

You just got your name on a list and they selected six members.

And so- - You were one of 'em.

- After my time on the newspaper people said you should run and I got nominated.

I wasn't even at the meeting and I seen my name on the list, you know.

- How'd you feel about that?

- I didn't really, I just, I'll never make it.

I'm here on the newspaper and nobody will ever elect me to a tribal council.

And here I got elected.

I got on there.

And- - So you were in your 30s at the time, right?

- 29 years old.

- 29 years old.

- Yeah.

- And you were the youngest member of the council, I presume?

- Yeah, At that time.

And so you know learning, during my time as the editor, I really got into a lot of areas, you know, hunting, fishing, oil and gas.

- Being a community journalist is a good way to learn about things, isn't it?

- Yeah, yeah.

You really got into a lot of different areas.

Then when I got on the council, just a whole avalanche of issues and you know, areas of importance.

And when I first got on council, that's when the big horn adjudication was just starting to hit.

And I got into council and they were talking to all these terms about PIA and cost benefit ratio and transfer of use and administration and water, you know, and I didn't have the slightest idea of what they were talking about.

Then they started talking about oil and gas and I didn't have the slightest idea what I was talking about.

Appointed us to the Environmental Quality Commission and said you get, your first task is to come up with a tribal water code.

I about fell out of my chair.

I didn't know anything about water rights.

I thought you needed a whole bunch of attorneys and consultants and engineers to make this happen.

And finally, one night I just blew up at a big meeting we had in Cheyenne and- - What happened?

- We had all 12 of our council members there, and each tribe had their own attorneys and department of interior, department of Justice and BIA, and all their consultants and engineers.

There was about 40 people in the room, and just all these terms that I didn't even understand.

And it was all about white man kind of stuff.

Information that I couldn't quite understand at the time.

And I just said, I just got up and I said this isn't an Indian Water Ranch case.

This is a nothing but a white man's water case.

And I got up and I walked out.

And I got back to my hotel room and I was sitting there for a while and I was thinking, what did you just do?

And that's what they were saying.

That's when I got mad because they gave us a stack of documents about that thick and they said oh, we need a decision on this by in the morning.

And that's when I said this is nothing but a white man's water case because who was our elders?

How come we weren't talking to our elders?

How come we weren't finding out how they felt about water, what was their viewpoint on water?

And so when I was sitting in my room stewing by myself, I just said you know, if you're gonna, if you're gonna do this job and if you wanna be on this council, you better start doing your homework.

You're gonna have to read, you're gonna have to learn, you're gonna have to ask questions, you're gonna have to participate.

And so water, taxation, energy, environment.

At that time, I said those are our four main areas.

And that's where I spent all my time.

- It took time, but you were committed to it.

- Yep.

- And you served on the council then for more than 20 years.

- Yes.

- Which is unusual.

- Yes.

- That's a good way to gain knowledge and use it then too.

- That's exactly what I did.

- You spoke earlier today, you talked a lot about that.

There's more than just recognizing the issue, but it's implementing the knowledge and exercising the right and administering the problem.

And these are things that were important to you and that you practiced what you were preaching.

- Yes.

And you know, the other part of that is just the elders and the way they talk to us.

And they always talked about our young people and how we need to take care of 'em and watch over them and guide 'em and counsel 'em.

And so I've got five children, I've got grandchildren, and I've got a lot of relations.

And so that's part of what drove me is we can't just be depending on per capita payments and federal funding.

We gotta figure out how do we take care of ourselves.

- When you talk about the elders in the tribal culture, there is actually a group of sort of formally recognized group of elders.

And part of what you're talking about refers to them helping to set direction and priorities that the rest of the tribe, including those in government, try to implement.

Is that an accurate way to look at it?

- When we first started our tribal water code, we had some good helpers.

We had Dr. Charles Wilkinson from University of Colorado at Boulder, who was a renowned attorney on federal Indian law and federal Indian water rights.

And then we had another man named Dr. David Getches.

He was the former Colorado State water engineer.

And he was the original director of the Native American Rights Fund, NARF, which John EchoHawk is the head of that now.

But we had those two guys talk, come up and help put our tribal water code together.

- Do you consider yourself an elder now?

Are you treated that way?

Is that, do you want to share and help set those policies and priorities the way that this, that the elders did when you were starting out?

- Well, they treat me like that, but I don't feel like an elder.

I feel like I'm still about 45 and I still you know, just do all the things I did when I was in my younger day and you know, go to football game, go to Broncos games, you know, go to concerts.

- You grew up here, right?

- Yeah.

- In Wyoming, on the Wind River Reservation.

- Yep.

- But you lived out of state?

- Oh yeah, I lived in Denver.

- As a young adult.

- Well, I did start college one year.

I made it one semester and fizzled out.

But I worked for Caterpillar Tractor Company when I was in Denver.

- Yeah.

- For several years.

And then- - What was your job there?

- We were, we had a big, there was a big parts department down there and you had to keep big inventories and deliveries and there was a mass, one of the biggest buildings in Denver at that time.

And Caterpillar was pretty powerful back in those days.

And they had you know, things all over the globe.

And so we had a pretty big operation in Denver that I worked on.

- How were, if, if you don't mind my asking, how were you treated there as a enrolled tribal member from a small community in Wyoming?

You succeeded in the job, obviously.

What was that like?

- It was you know, people recognized that I was a tribal member and you know, we always just talked about it and I worked with, the area I worked in there was you know, a lot of black people, a lot of Mexicans, a lot of white people.

We just all got along and you know, we were from different walks of life and they're all interested in you know, my background and wanted to learn about Indians and reservations and other things.

I always got along real good with people in there.

- Now prior to that, you had military service as well?

- Yes, yes.

- What branch were you?

- I was in the Army, - US Army.

Did you get drafted or enlisted?

- I enlisted for three years.

- You did?

- Yes.

- Why did you do that?

- I was 18 and there just wasn't much here at that time and not much work.

And a lot of my uncles and a lot of our relatives all joined the service.

And my grandma and grandpa used say well, if you're not gonna work and if you're not gonna find a job, you should join the service and try to make something of yourself in the service.

- What was that experience like for you?

Was it valuable?

- Well, when I joined, they sent me to be a medic.

I got my training in Fort Sam, Houston, Texas.

And so, and you know, at that time all the medics were being sent to Vietnam and there was 92 medics in my company and, or 96 medics and 92 went to Vietnam and four of us went to Germany.

So I was a medic for a Nike Hercules nuclear missile battery, way out in the middle of nowhere in Germany.

And that was kind of interesting 'cause the Cold War was hot and heavy in those days and we were always having a lot of alerts, get the missiles ready, you know.

And so that was kind of a part of my life that did help me grow.

It prepared me for my future.

But you know, now that I look back on it, why are we fighting wars against other people all over the world who have never really done anything to me or to us.

And so we're still doing it and you know, I think that's really a choice that people have to make conscientious objectors, or whoever.

But you know, war is bad.

War is ugly, war is evil.

And there just seems to be a segment of our society that wants to keep war.

- Can't resist.

- Yep, yep.

- So you'd had military training, you'd had a good job in a big company, in a big city.

You returned to Wyoming.

Thinking back to when you did that, what moved you to come back?

- My oldest daughter, she was about four years old and we lived in Denver and a big city to now that I, at that time I said this isn't a place for my daughter.

I grew up in Johnstown, up here on the banks of the big Wind River.

And you know, it was a good life, hunting, fishing, riding horses, swimming, climbing hills, out on the wide open and you know, then helping my grandparents, you know, we hunt, gather wood, you know, just preparing ourselves.

And I really missed that life of family, togetherness, community.

'Cause our tribe, you know, we have a lot of gatherings and doings, and we honor and participate, and enjoy, and that really bonds our communities here.

And I was telling my daughter, she was four years old and I was telling her we're gonna move back to Wyoming, going back to the res.

And I used to always take her to the parks in Denver and we used to always hang out and parks.

And she said dad, are we gonna move back to that big park.

She thought the reservation was just one big park.

- In a way, yes.

- And so, and then they offered me this job, a summer job.

It was just a summer job for the editor because I had started one semester of school at the University of Colorado and didn't do very good.

Couldn't get interested in school and didn't do very good.

And then they offered me this job and that job launched my political career.

Here I am.

- There's a legislative district in the Wyoming legislature, which comprises mostly the Wind River Indian reservation.

And you left the council, didn't run again.

Have you ever considered running for that legislative post?

- Never.

- How come?

- My feeling is that the government to government relation to what we have is with the United States.

It's not with the state of Wyoming.

We don't want any state influence on the reservation.

We don't want any county influence on the reservation.

But right now, as you well know, we've got a heavy state and county presence on us taking a lot of money and resources off our reservation.

Why can't we manage that and handle that ourselves?

Why can't we raise our young people to respect our treaty, respect our people, respect what we have, and take care of that in such a way that we can strengthen our families and community.

- You talk about a sort of a three-pronged approach to planning, the short term, the midterm, and the long term.

It's gonna take a while, a long time to get to some of these places that you want to get to.

- The short term goals are very achievable.

And there are some that we've been working on for quite a while.

You know, we've been kind of laying a foundation for this.

You know, we established a tribal court way back.

We established a severance tax, we established a water code, the environmental code, tribal employment's rights, you know, all this governmental infrastructure that you need to exercise your sovereignty wisely.

So that's where we gotta put a lot of attention on.

How do we upgrade and uphold our civil regulatory authority?

How do we adopt the law policies and laws, standards, regulations, and guidelines that'll help us diversify our economy and minimize insults to Mother earth and diversify it with clean industry that provides the jobs and the training and the support that we need to have strong businesses and communities.

And we're pretty fortunate to be from Wind River.

We've got a lot, we've got land, we've got water, timber, and a lot of other natural resources that can be developed without too much harm.

And so that's really where we're at now is there's a couple areas now that we're focusing on, you know, taking over some of our own oil and gas fields.

We've already made one step there.

We want to take over all the oil and gas fields on the res.. How do we, we have some major claims against the state and the federal government and others.

If those claims are successful, there's gonna be some revenue to work with.

And so that's what we want to start doing is how do we lay, start some planning and strategy that will lay the groundwork for good diversification based on the resources we have.

At one time, (indistinct) was saying you guys have some of the best sand and gravel deposits left in Wyoming.

You got good sand and gravel all over there.

And right now they said if you guys had an asphalt plant on the reservation, we'd buy everything that you could create.

- What, for example, would that take as far as you see it?

Why isn't it there?

- We've done a lot of feasibility studies and the one good thing about BIA, back in the day, they did a lot of minerals assessments of the reservation.

So that's why we know about all these solid minerals that are out there.

We have a high quality sandstone out there in the Crow Creek area that's used, made for high quality glass and then the sand and gravel deposits all over, you know, phosphate, bentonite, gypsum.

That's things that can be used nowadays.

We're also thinking about you know, we have hundreds of abandoned gas wells on the res, about 300 abandoned gas wells.

There's enough product in those, left in those abandoned gas wells to fuel a natural gas fired power plant for 40 years.

A hundred megawatt.

- Oh really?

- One megawatt can power a thousand homes.

So with a hundred megawatt plant we'd have a hundred thousand homes that we could power up.

Energy is very important to your economic development in your future.

The Energy Policy Act gives tribes preference in power supplying.

We're fairly lucky here 'cause we're not large tribes.

- Yeah.

- 5,000 Shoshones, 10,000 Arapahos.

You know, you go to some of these other reservations, 30, 40,000 tribal members.

The Navajos have 400,000 tribal members.

So we can diversify and take care of ourselves.

We gotta start growing a lot of our own food.

That's another area we have to really bring, get ourselves healthy and strong because all these chemicals and other things they're putting into food nowadays.

So start growing our own food.

We need to build storage sites for the future with climate adaptation, drought, and all these other things that are happening.

We gotta make sure we have a secure, readily available source of clean water.

The water board down, we're identifying storage sites and now we're trying to get our tax program in place to reclaim some of our valuation that's been taken.

We're getting our Environmental Quality commission back in gear again to start protecting our environment.

So water, taxation, energy, and environment, that's the four main areas I believe is gonna pull us out of this hole created by the pandemic.

- The typical person might think of it well, we wanna maintain the language, which I know, you know, you believe is vital.

We want to have cultural traditions that people can see and appreciate.

But it's, you're talking about strengthening communities and families, not just through cedaring and powwows, which both of which I love by the way, and language, but also through industry and science and government and law.

And that's how you can get to this stronger point.

- I call it grassroots to governance.

- Grassroots to governance.

Are there enough people like you, people coming up through the ranks to get this done?

- That's what we're working on right now.

That's what this community education involvement is all about.

We also, my GYC office, we do a lot of presentations in the schools with grade schools and high schools and a lot of this, a lot of what I talked about today, we talk about it in the schools and these young kids get it, you know, they say how come we are not doing anything about this?

How come we didn't file a claim?

How come we didn't do something about this long time ago?

You know, we need to stand up for ourselves, we need to exercise our treaty.

And so these young, these young kids, they get it.

And so that's where we're devoting a lot of our effort.

Young kids, connecting them to the elders, talking about Wind River sovereignty and governance, the resources we have.

That's all right here.

- I want to ask you quickly too about your new position, which is with the Greater Yellowstone Coalition.

- Yes.

- How did that come up and what are you doing for the coalition and for Yellowstone Park?

- Well, right now my position, I'm the Senior Wind River Conservation Associate for Greater Yellowstone Coalition.

Our head office is in Bozeman, Montana.

The mission of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition is to protect the land, waters, and wildlife of the greater Yellowstone ecosystem.

- Which is a lot bigger area than the park itself.

- That's right.

And we're part of that, the Wind River Reservation is part of that greater Yellowstone ecosystem.

When I seen their mission of protecting land, waters, and wildlife, that's what I did when I was on the Fish and Game committee.

And on the council.

And when I, even when I wasn't on the council law, I was always going to the business council and say we gotta get this code in place.

We gotta do this power plant.

We gotta take over.

You know, I was always taught we gotta protect our wildlife.

So even when I wasn't on the council law, I was always doing that kind of work out there and not getting paid for it.

'Cause I wasn't employed by anybody.

And then when I seen this job advertisement, I said hey, that's what I was just doing this morning.

I should maybe apply for this and get paid for- - You can get paid for it.

- What I'm doing.

- I helped the Greater Yellowstone Coalition staff and board understand that tribes are formidable allies in this effort for conservation.

You know, we did some research.

There was 49 tribes with ancestral affiliation to Yellowstone National Park.

- 49.

- 49.

And then just last year they had the 150th anniversary of Yellowstone National Park.

And for us as indigenous people, it wasn't really anything to celebrate because 150 years ago they killed us and forcibly removed us to create this nation's first national park.

That park is a very sacred area to most tribes.

It was like our pharmacy, our hospital, our garden, our grocery store, our recreation area.

You know, it was just all things to us.

We did a lot of hunting and gathering and enjoying the healing powers around Yellowstone.

150 years later, the main thing we wanna celebrate is that we're still here and we're still connected to Yellowstone and we still have our ceremonies and our lodges and our medicines.

We still have our Indian doctors and our people because of our connection to Mother Earth and all the things, the good things she has to offer.

We have a lot of good, strong reason to stay connected to Yellowstone and all the things around us.

- You strike me as an upbeat person, an optimistic person.

Am I right about that?

- You're right.

I think we have a lot of opportunity.

I think we've got a lot of people that are ready.

I just really enjoy what I'm doing.

I just think we have a bright future here at Wind River and we're just, like I say, we're just very lucky to be from this part of the world.

- You're glad you hung around, you said.

- I am sure glad I'm here.

- Wes Martel, keep hanging around will you?

- I sure will.

And I hope other guys like you are hanging around with me.

- Okay.

Thanks for being with us on Wyoming Chronicle and best wishes to you.

- Yep, same.

Thank you.

(upbeat music)